With the introduction of in-class group-based virtual reality (VR), multiple students can interact in a single shared "metaverse". One geography-focused group VR option is the Wooorld app, available on various Meta Quest unit models. To evaluate the feasibility of group VR in a higher education geography lecture classroom, a pilot study was run for two days with a small, upper-level Urban Geography class at Arkansas Tech University in spring 2023. Using multiple wireless Meta Quest 2 headsets, the class collectively used the Wooorld app to visit 3D-rendered global downtowns. Inside the app, students saw each other's avatars and manipulated the viewing area for the rest of the class. Students completed pre/post-experience surveys, and the data suggest strong student enthusiasm for shared VR, and for Wooorld. However, some technical and physical space issues arose. While this pilot study aimed to evaluate the potential of classroom group VR via the Wooorld app, this study also considers the possibility of using group VR in future geography lecture classrooms.

Blank paper maps are often used to assess student location knowledge. A total of 502 students enrolled in 12 undergraduate World Geography classes between 2016 and 2022 were initially asked to find some of the following countries on a blank world map: Afghanistan, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, North Korea, Russia, Syria, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Venezuela. Comparing student cohorts, results were generally mediocre and consistent over time, yet changes in identification accuracy appear with the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and in times of intense US media coverage of a country.

Arkansas has been described as "two states in one", with two diagonally split regions: a growing upland north and west, and a declining lowland south and east. However, do Arkansas residents share these in-state regional associations of "growth" and "decline"? 48 Arkansas high school graduates enrolled in the "Arkansas Geography" course at Arkansas Tech University between 2018 and 2021 were surveyed about their preferences of all 75 Arkansas counties. Only 10 of 75 Arkansas counties were rated positively by students, with higher scores occurring around Northwest Arkansas, Russellville, and Hot Springs. The lowest-rated counties were in the Arkansas Delta and in very rural areas of the Ozarks or Ouachita mountains. A possible "home effect" exists as students rated their home counties highly, but the effect was largely minimized. County ratings were consistent across the 2018, 2020, and 2021 surveys. Most Arkansas regions were rated higher than the constituent counties in each region, giving credence to regional perceptions as ideas. These results are useful, not only for understanding intrastate issues within Arkansas, but also because associating high preferences with population and economic growth can aid future decision-making from planners and other stakeholders.Keywords: Arkansasgeography educationpreference mapscartographyurbanization AcknowledgementsThe author offers sincere thanks to the students at Arkansas Tech University students who voluntarily participated in this study over the years.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.IRB statementThis research was approved and found as "exempt" by the Arkansas Tech University Institutional Review Board. Due to the multi-year nature of this project, additional renewals/applications occurred. The last such exemption was granted in early August 2021, before the Fall 2021 semester at Arkansas Tech University.

ABSTRACT Given the sensational development of virtual reality (VR) technologies in recent years, how can hopes of fully-immersive experiential learning in geography classrooms be achieved? One solution may be through Google Earth VR, which is a truly immersive app for ‘visiting’ places across the globe via a wired VR headset. The app has been an increasing focus of academic research and classroom VR sets, but many challenges exist, such as technical issues and developer neglect by Google. As the educational benefits of VR for student learning continue to be seen, can a somewhat stagnant Google Earth VR app become a mainstay in academic geography, thus realising the dream of immersive classrooms?

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size AcknowledgementsMany thanks to the Arkansas Tech University students who completed these types of assignments over the years, which led to the development of this “GIS in the non-GIS classroom” argument. Preliminary findings and map approaches were presented at the 2017 Southwest States Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers and in poster form at the 2017 Arkansas GIS Users Forum. Thanks to the participants at these conferences who provided important insights that improved this study’s approach.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Additional informationFundingNo additional grants or equipment funding were used in this project, other than Arkansas Tech University travel grants for the two 2017 conference meetings listed above. Notes on contributorsPatrick D. Hagge Patrick D. Hagge is an associate professor of geography in the Department of History and Political Science at Arkansas Tech University, where he has taught since 2012. Dr. Hagge’s major research interests are Arkansas geography, geography education, and geographic information systems (GIS), specifically historical GIS. He won the Arkansas Tech Faculty Excellence in Teaching Award in 2020. Dr. Hagge is one of the founding members of the interdisciplinary Anthropology & Geography B.A. degree program at Arkansas Tech. He has secured grants to fund a high-end drone for map image acquisition, an HTC Vive virtual reality system for in-class mapping, and several Oculus Quest VR units for upcoming research weighing the effectiveness of classroom VR technology. Before life in academia, Dr. Hagge spent 2 years working as a GIS analyst at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

This article explores questions on perceptions of the location of the 'Midwest', a contested vernacular region of the United States. We created a custom online survey with R's web framework Shiny, in which participants were presented with a blank web map and asked to 'draw' their definition of the Midwest. Instead of simply describing the aggregated results, we employ machine learning algorithms - Naive Bayes, Random Forest and Categorical Boosting - in an attempt to classify users into groups, with a focus on the features that most effectively separate responses. We also demonstrate a way to engineer features from a single spatial response question and provide an implementation through a small R package. Furthermore, we discuss misclassified observations and suggest some driving factors in the construction of regional perception. This research is important not only for its contribution to perceptual regions but also for the approach, which could be applied to place-based survey analysis more broadly.

Reviewed by: Urban Dreams, Rural Commonwealth: The Rise of Plantation Society in the Chesapeake by Paul Musselwhite Patrick D. Hagge Urban Dreams, Rural Commonwealth: The Rise of Plantation Society in the Chesapeake. Paul Musselwhite. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019. Pp. xii+341 maps, illustrations, notes. $50.00, hardcover, ISBN 978-0-226-58528-4. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the wider Chesapeake Bay region was full of plantation landscapes. Few cities, however, dotted [End Page 169] this overwhelmingly rural world. The conventional historiography of the Chesapeake suggests that the dual factors of plantation agriculture and physical geography limited urban growth, as nearby rivers allowed for planters to export their product without the need for city-based economic services. A plantation-dominated Chesapeake was viewed as destined to remain rural, and even Thomas Jefferson argued that nature itself dictated the lack of towns in the region. However, this view erases the historical fact that Chesapeake residents both understood their own region's rurality and anticipated eventual city growth. In Urban Dreams, Rural Commonwealth: The Rise of Plantation Society in the Chesapeake, Paul Musselwhite contests the dominant theme of the rural historic Chesapeake Bay region, what Musselwhite calls the "artificial belief in the incompatibility between plantations and cities" (3). Instead, he notes that while ultimately unsuccessful, Chesapeake urbanization incorporated wide-ranging experimentation in city building and deep debates over the very necessity of cities themselves. The book's seven major chapters are arranged chronologically, with each section centering on a particular time period that experienced the possibility of urban growth, such as the early decades of the Virginia Company or the Restoration era. Each chapter addresses the contemporary debates surrounding urbanization, as well as the resulting failures of urban development in that era. An epilogue describes contested urban development in the years immediately aft er the American Revolution. Throughout Urban Dreams, the author delivers an efficient discussion of the rural Chesapeake—a region whose lack of towns differentiated it from other English colonial domains in North America. Multiple parts of this book deserve additional recommendation. Of particular note is Musselwhite's superior quality of research. Part historical narrative, part historical geography, and part historical analysis, Urban Dreams centers on a well-researched argument, drawing from a seemingly endless number of archival sources housed on both sides of the Atlantic. Personal papers, government documents, and business records result in a full sixty pages of footnotes covering nearly two centuries of Chesapeake history. Several maps representing plantation sites are also effective. This well-sourced history gives more credence to Musselwhite's narratives of different key players' motivations in plans for the urban [End Page 170] Chesapeake, including the "intense contemporary concern" of Chesapeake residents over expected urban development (8). To use one chapter as an example, "Towns, Improvements, and the Contest for Authority in the 1680s" weaves a successful treatment of plans for regional reform in the years aft er Bacon's Rebellion. The different points of view in this chapter include the positions of the English Crown and the Stuart court, the Virginia House of Burgesses, local county government officials, and Chesapeake Bay planters. Was a city primarily a civic institution or an economic engine? At times, different regional stakeholders had conflicting answers to that question. Urban Dreams, Rural Commonwealth is one volume in "American Beginnings, 1500–1900," a series of seventeen books on American history published by the University of Chicago Press. However, this text is important not only to historians but also to urban and economic scholars alike. Urban Dreams appears at the end of a recent period with renewed focus on the historical Chesapeake, in texts such as Jean Russo and J. Elliot Russo's Planting an Empire: The Early Chesapeake in British North America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012). The rurality of the pre-European Chesapeake was explored in James Rice's 2009 work, Nature and History in the Potomac Country: From Hunter-Gatherers to the Age of Jefferson (John Hopkins University Press). Virginia 1619: Slavery and Freedom in the Making of English America is a 2019 volume edited by Paul Musselwhite, Peter Mancall, and James Horn exploring society building of the colonial Chesapeake (University of North...

that most of these ‘energy capitals’ ravaged for hydrocarbon extraction purposes. Throughout the majority of the contributions, there is commendable attention to scale and the linkages between local lived experiences and regional, national, and global forces shaping the energy sector. Taken together, this collection is further evidence of a growing positive trend toward collaboration and interdisciplinarity between (environmental) history, geography, and related fields like science and technology studies. As such the text would be of great use to courses examining energy, natural resources, and environmental history from an industrial perspective; selections from the book might be appropriate and interesting additions to regional geography courses. But the text would also benefit courses in urban history, and perhaps also as additional readings in courses focused on economic geography, globalization, or any other situation that seeks to illustrate the physical and environmental impacts of natural resource-based economic growth.